This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Now then, is not that the most useful to us, which in
all places and always and most of all we stand in need of,
—like a piece of household-stuff or a tool, nay, like a
friend that is ready at all hours and seasons? But fire is
not always useful; for sometimes it is a prejudice to us
and we avoid it if we can. But water is useful, winter
and summer, to the healthy and sick, night and day;
neither indeed is there any time but that a man has need
of it. Therefore it is that the dead are called alibantes,
as being without moisture (λιβάς) and by that means deprived of life; and man may be without fire, but never
[p. 332]
was any man without water. Besides, that which was
existent from the beginning and with the first creation of
man must be thought more useful than what was afterwards
invented. From whence it is apparent, that Nature bestowed the one upon us as a thing absolutely necessary,
the other fortune and art found out for superfluity of uses.
Nor was the time ever known when man lived without
water, nor was it an invention of any of the Gods or
heroes; for it was present almost at their generation, and
it made their creation possible. But the use of fire was a
late invention of Prometheus, at what time life was without
fire, but not without water. And that this is no poetical
fiction is demonstrable from this, that there are many sorts
of people that live without fire, without houses, and without hearths, in the open air. And Diogenes the Cynic
made no use of fire; so that after he had swallowed a raw
fish, ‘This hazard,’ said he, ‘do I run for your sakes.’
But without water no man ever thought it convenient or
possible to live.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.